Monthly Archives: May 2014

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Major banks under investigation for ties to Mexican drug cartelsFederal regulators in the United States are reportedly investigation no fewer than two major American banks with regards to their relationships with clients believed to be tied to Mexican drug cartels. Reuters reported exclusively on Wednesday this week that the US Securities and Exchange Commission is probing both Charles Schwab Corp.

Montana Couple Takes on Bank of AmericaAbraham and Betty Morrow have never met Sunil Kumar, of Hyderabad, India, but he is a key figure in their fraud lawsuit against Bank of America. The lawsuit, alleging that the bank deliberately led them into foreclosure on their retirement home outside White Sulphur Springs, Montana had previously been dismissed by a district court judge.

Who Is The New Secret Buyer Of U.S. Debt?On the surface, the economic atmosphere of the U.S. has appeared rather calm and uneventful. Stocks are up, employment isn’t great but jobs aren’t collapsing into the void (at least not openly), and the U.S. dollar seems to be going strong. Peel away the thin veneer, however, and a different financial horror show is revealed.

Giving NSA the boot – California bids to end spying on its citizensAFP Photo / Paul J. Richards The state of California is looking to pass a law stating the federal government would need a warrant from a judge if it wants to search residents’ cellphones and computer records. The bill passed the state senate with just one person voting against.

Philly judges face corruption charges for getting politicians off the hookA number of Philadelphia city judges will stand trial in the coming weeks after being accused of organizing a ticket-fixing scheme that benefited politically-connected members of the city, an issue that compelled officials to ban traffic court altogether. After a delay, Monday opening statements in the corruption trial were scheduled to begin next week.

Low-cost production will mean the end of jobsContinue reading page |1| 2 The internet and low production costs will free us from work and want, says social theorist Jeremy Rifkin – but what will we do then? Stephen Jay Gould called an early book of his “a cleverly constructed tract of anti-intellectual propaganda masquerading as scholarship”.

Glenn Greenwald: U.S. Corporate Media is “Neutered, Impotent and Obsolete”In the final part of our extended interview, Glenn Greenwald reflects on the Pulitzer Prize, adversarial journalism and the corporate media’s response to his reporting on Edward Snowden’s leaked National Security Agency documents. “We knew that once we started publishing not one or two stories, but dozens of stories …

Mexican citizen sues ICE for beatings, 5 months in solitaryReuters / Mike Blake A Mexican citizen is suing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for beating him, denying him medical treatment and keeping him in solitary confinement for five months after a traffic violation. Local police arrested Fernando Figueroa-Barajas at a roadblock near his Mississippi home in August 2013 for driving without a license.

Blackstone unit Invitation Homes sued over rental house’s conditionLast spring, Edit Novshadyan and her husband were happy to land a Sun Valley three-bedroom house, with enough room for their son to play and their family to grow. Another child was on the way. So they signed a one-year lease with Invitation Homes, an arm of private-equity giant Blackstone Group and the largest player in the emerging single-family home rental industry.

Early Tap of 401(k) Replaces Homes as American Piggy BankPremature withdrawals from retirement accounts have become America’s new piggy bank, cracked open in record amounts during lean times by people like Cindy Cromie, who needed the money to rent a U-Haul and start a new life. Her employer, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, had outsourced Cromie’s medical transcription work.

Chris Hedges | Capitalism, Not Government Is the ProblemOur corporate masters have set in place laws that, when we rise up, will permit the state to herd us like sheep into military detention camps. Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act is but one piece of the legal tyranny now in place to ensure total corporate control.

Washington pot grower sues state over taxing federal crimeAFP Photo / Miguel Rojo A Washington man is suing representatives of that state for taxing his marijuana crop, saying the state can’t tax him because he’s being federally prosecuted for that very crop, and that paying the tax would be a violation of his 5th Amendment rights. Martin Nickerson Jr.